Gates vs. Jobs: Keynote text analysis, 2008 edition

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Gates vs. Jobs: Keynote text analysis, 2008 edition

A year ago, we analyzed the text of speeches by Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates during their respective Macworld Expo and Consumer Electronics Show appearances. The idea was to glean something about their mindsets -- and their companies -- by looking at word choice and speaking habits. By popular demand, here is the 2008 edition, comparing the speeches by Jobs and Gates at the same events this month.

Reminders: The larger the word in the tag cloud, the more frequently it was used. And in general, the lower the numerical scores, the easier the language is to understand. See notes and observations at the bottom.

Steve Jobs, 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo

Jobs and the MacBook Air at Macworld. (P-I Photo)

Avg. Words/Sentence: 13.79
Lexical Density: 15.76
Hard Words: 3.18%
Gunning Fog Index: 6.79

Video

Bill Gates at CES. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Bill Gates, 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show

Avg. Words/Sentence: 18.23
Lexical Density: 24.52
Hard Words: 5.2%
Gunning Fog Index: 9.37

Video | Text

Notes: Jobs' 2008 tag cloud shows how the main focus of his keynote shifted back to Macs, at least compared with last year's iPhone unveiling, which clearly dominated the 2007 Macworld keynote. Adjectives such as "amazing" and "great" remain staples of his language, but he has apparently dropped his habit of saying "boom" repeatedly. I counted only one during this year's Macworld, not enough to make the cloud.

Gates mentioned "phone" repeatedly during his 2008 keynote -- much more so than he did last year, perhaps reflecting an increased focus by the company on the mobile-phone market. He's still big into "advances," but apparently he wasn't feeling as "cool" as he did last year, because he didn't say that word once this time around.

The Microsoft chairman turned over a sizable chunk of this year's keynote to Robbie Bach, president of the company's Entertainment and Devices Division, whose words weren't included in this analysis. That's why product names such as Zune and Xbox don't appear.

Gates' sentences were shorter this year than last. However, as in the past, Jobs fared better than Gates did in the various linguistic measures.

For an alternative view, see this page with a slide control.

See anything else notable? Feel free to comment below.

Credits: Tag clouds created by the P-I's Brian Chin using Chirag Mehta's Tagline Generator. Linguistic analysis made with UsingEnglish.com tools.

Posted by at January 22, 2008 3:00 p.m.
Categories: Apple, Bill Gates

Comments

#89387

Posted by Kaleo at 1/22/08 8:53 p.m.

All this may indicate is that Gates engages in obfuscation to distract from his cluelessness about the future of computing and what users really want whereas Jobs can engage in plain talk as he has nothing to hide! ;-)

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#89403

Posted by unregistered user at 1/22/08 9:11 p.m.

@Kaleo

Oh please. Love him or hate him, Bill G. has had a much larger contribution to computing than any Mac fan will give him credit for.

If Jobs is so much smarter/better, he would be the richest man on the planet and not Gates.

If you like Macs, thats fine. But give a little credit where credit is due.

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#89493

Posted by unregistered user at 1/22/08 10:28 p.m.

think about this: if you had a choice of spending a weekend with Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, who would you pick? For me, it would be Bill Gates - I just think that he would be a better host.

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#89509

Posted by unregistered user at 1/22/08 11:00 p.m.

Hmm.. Sure, the smarter you are the richer you'll be? They both contributed in a big way. Let them do their jobs. There's no question Jobs is a better communicator while Gates had better business sense early on. And why equate being a better host to being a better CEO? That's absurd.

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#89557

Posted by unregistered user at 1/23/08 12:45 a.m.

"If Jobs is so much smarter/better, he would be the richest man on the planet and not Gates."

Please...when did the amount of money you have or make become a measure of creativity or intelligence? By your yardstick da Vinci and Einstein would be pathetic losers.

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#89585

Posted by unregistered user at 1/23/08 2:17 a.m.

right Bill gates given most inovation things to the world........

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#89646

Posted by Freakshow1 at 1/23/08 9:33 a.m.

Gates = Mac ripoff

If it wasn't for windows licenses, Microsoft would have gone out of business long ago.

And to give credit where credit due: PARC created Human Interface Computing. Jobs ripped off PARC, Gates ripped off Apple.

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#89654

Posted by unregistered user at 1/23/08 9:54 a.m.

Bill Gates may look nerdy and inept but he has a ruthless streak in him, which has grown as his wealth has increased. Anyone seen as a threat is bought out or squashed. Also, he has made one or two development deals with small firms and then stolen their code and walked away from his commitments. He also wants to give people what they think they should have.

Jobs is very intense (his father WAS Egyptian -- if you've been to Egypt you'll know what I mean) and is passionate about serving up what people really want -- stunningly aesthetic simplicity. I am sure he loves having loads of money, but doesn't show it as much, $1 per annum salary from Apple and so on.

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#89663

Posted by unregistered user at 1/23/08 10:10 a.m.

Bill Gates is not the richest man in the world because of Windows. He is the richest man in the world because of MS-DOS a program he purchased the rights to for $50,000 dollars, then licensed it to IBM. All of his success is due to getting his OS installed on every PC sold, then using that to leverage his other software. It worked brilliantly but has not innovated anything, he may be smart but that doesn't make him creative. I will give him credit where it is due. He is a great philanthropist and uses his money will probably do more to better mankind then his software ever did.

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#89685

Posted by unregistered user at 1/23/08 11:04 a.m.

I hate it when people compare Jobs and Gates together using their wealth especially when a great portion of Gates' wealth has come through illegal business practices. Now that both the US (twice) and the EU has convicted Microsoft's business practices throughout the last decade or so as illegal, I would be interested to know what percentage of his wealth came through illegal practices and how much was on the up and up. (This concept could also be applied to each one's contribution to the tech industry.)

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#89929

Posted by unregistered user at 1/24/08 5:36 a.m.

This confirms that Steve has (at least temporarily) lost his "boom!" Here's hoping it's a temporary condition.

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#91072

Posted by unregistered user at 1/28/08 2:45 a.m.

#89663

"All of his success is due to getting his OS installed on every PC sold, then using that to leverage his other software. "

Absolutely nothing to do with his "ohm" papa being a lawyer?
#89685
How do you feel about Bono marketing red phones & using a blue one for the show :-D)

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